Twisted

by Knight, Natasha

  “Do you know where Gregory is?” I ask.

  She gets a worried expression on her face and says something I don’t understand but the shake of her head tells me that’s a no.

  I don’t know why I ask. I’m not unhappy that he’s not here, but I’m also trapped in this house without even a proper pair of boots to go outside or even a change of clothes.

  After I eat, I wander around the house, looking for a TV or something to keep me from boredom. I should have grabbed a book from the library but it’s too dark in there now, at least that’s what I tell myself when I get to the door because that icy cold makes me shudder and I turn back to the living room where Irina stacks logs on the fire before slipping away.

  There, I find a bottle of whiskey and pour myself some even though I don’t really drink the stuff or at least never have before.

  I sit in one of the two armchairs and watch the fire, taking off my shoes and tucking my knees up under me, enjoying the warmth and crackle of damp logs.

  After drinking some of the whiskey, I rest my head on the arm of the chair and let my eyes close, just for a few minutes. It’s warm here with the fire and I don’t want to be in his bed. I know I should get up. I should stay alert. But I’m tired and it’s dark and quiet and I can’t resist the pull of sleep.

  I know I’m dreaming when I see the little girl from the photographs running through the house, this house. I know it’s her. I have no doubt. She’s laughing and chasing her puppy. Everything is as it was then, the house beautiful and light and bright. And warm. So warm, I can almost smell bread baking in the kitchen and feel her laughter as much as hear it.

  I’m in awe of it all and following her down corridor after corridor, but looking all around me, not really watching where I’m going. Just knowing I’m following her.

  But that light, that warmth, it changes. And it’s not a gradual change.

  With a shudder I slow just as she does as she runs toward the hall leading to the library.

  I don’t want to go there and I don’t want her to go there.

  I try to reach out for her, to stop her. I know it’s a dream, but I still want to stop her.

  It grows colder as we near that room, me following her toward it and it’s urgent now, the need to stop her from going in there.

  But when she glances back at me, her face, it’s different. Corpse-like, at least momentarily.

  Like there’s a flash of skull just for a single bone-chilling moment, so quick that when I blink it’s gone and she’s the pretty little girl again. But she’s no longer laughing. Not even smiling. And I stop chasing her because she’s stopped running. Like she, too, knows what she’ll find inside.

  She opens the library door. I hear it creak and hug my arms against the cold.

  “Don’t,” I say.

  But she’s not listening to me. I don’t even know if she hears me.

  “Mama,” she calls out as she enters, and her voice is sweet and searching, and she’s so young. Too young for what she’ll find.

  It’s blood I see first.

  The little girl’s pretty, white satin ballet slippers soaking it up when she steps to the edge of that widening circle of blood.

  She doesn’t scream right away. She just looks down and cocks her head to the side like she doesn’t understand what she sees.

  I don’t want to look but I do.

  And I see the once beautiful woman lying there, faceless, holes where here pretty eyes were, bone showing through torn skin and blood. So much blood.

  Her dead mother.

  The little girl’s puppy mewls by her side.

  She’s crying, the little girl, and so am I.

  I want to tell her to turn away, to come to me. But it’s too late and she steps into the pool of blood and her little shoe leaves the smallest print.

  The puppy is barking now.

  I follow the little girl’s gaze as the puppy disappears behind a bookshelf.

  “Don’t go,” I try to tell her, but my voice makes almost no sound and I find myself following her, reaching out to catch her as she steps over her mother’s corpse.

  My hand slips through her ghost-like form as she chases after her puppy and I try not to look down as I, too, step over the woman’s lifeless body.

  I’m barefoot and the blood is dark and almost sticky when it drips thick and warm off my foot and I can’t look away, not until I hear the girl again. Hear her say something and her voice sounds different. Scared. And I think she’s calling for help.

  “I’m coming,” I say.

  A door creaks open and I drag my gaze from the blood and follow, leaving red footprints on the dusty floor.

  It seems like I’m running for hours, days, in this never-ending maze until I reach the end. I see her face again, that of the child again, like she’s been waiting for me. When she sees me, she reaches her hand out, and when I reach mine to hers, she giggles like it was all just a game, and pulls away and disappears down into a darker space, and I hear her giggles echo and look at her ruined shoe, the white satin a dirty red, left behind as she disappears until there’s almost no sound at all, not until I hear my name.

  “Amelia.”

  It’s a man’s voice. I look around but there’s no one here.

  I try to take another step toward where the little girl disappeared, but I can’t seem to move. I try again, but I’m caught on something.

  “Amelia.”

  I struggle, but whatever or whoever has got me won’t let me go.

  That giggle comes, so faint. So sad. And maybe it’s not a giggle but a cry.

  “I’m coming.” My voice sounds strange, like the words aren’t fully formed.

  “Amelia,” he says, his voice firmer, hands rougher.

  I open my eyes.

  No.

  My eyes were open.

  I just couldn’t see.

  He’s shaking me.

  “I have to go,” I say. I don’t know why he won’t let me go.

  Gregory’s forehead is furrowed and he’s watching me. “Go where?”

  I blink. Look around.

  “What the hell was that?” he asks.

  I’m in the living room, heading toward the hallway in my dream. Heading toward the library.

  “Hey.” He gives me another shake. “Can you hear me?”

  I look back at him. Shrug off his hands. “Of course, I can hear you.” I run a hand through my hair, wipe away the beads of sweat on my forehead.

  This hasn’t happened in years.

  Not since I was little. And then once more. On my sixteenth birthday.

  Helena woke me that time.

  I’d go to the library at home. Always the library. Because libraries are haunted places.

  “What just happened?” he asks.

  I step backward, my foot sticky, wet on the tiles and for a moment, I think I’m going to see red when I look down. But then I realize what the warmth of blood was. The undrunk whiskey in my glass, I must have turned the cup over, spilled it and stepped into it.

  The glass is lying on its side on the floor. I look down at it. It’s not broken at least.

  The fire flares then dims in the fireplace and I turn to it. It’s almost out. I should put another log in it.

  “Amelia?” Gregory asks. “Your eyes were open, but I don’t think you could see me.”

  I bend down, right the glass then straighten. I’m trembling.

  “It’s nothing.”

  It’s dark in here. The fire was the only source of light.

  He’s still watching me curiously when I look up at him.

  “Didn’t look like nothing,” he says.

  “Just a bad dream.”

  “Were you sleepwalking?”

  “No,” I lie. “I was going to put wood into the fire.”

  It’s so quiet here, so eerily quiet and I glance at the opening at the far end of the room that leads to the library and it looks like a mouth.

  We had ghosts in our library too,
I remind myself. I asked my sisters about them once. Asked who they were. I still remember how they looked at me. We were maybe eight at the time and I’d been seeing glimpses of them all my life. I thought everyone saw them.

  But after that time, I never asked again.

  And our ghosts, they were different than this little girl and her mother. They hadn’t been murdered.

  The image of the mother’s destroyed face flashes in my memory and I shudder. I kneel down, very aware of Gregory’s eyes on me, and pick up two logs, push them into the fireplace. With a poker, I try to restart the fire but can’t seem to get it going.

  “Just a bad dream,” he repeats my words, crouching down, taking the poker from me, pushing at the logs, restarting the fire without trouble.

  I watch the flames, then turn to him to see the eerie shadows the fire casts across his face.

  He stands, fills a glass with whiskey and sips it, still studying me.

  “How long have you been here?” I ask.

  He refills the glass I spilled and sets it on the table between the armchairs, sitting on one and gesturing for me to sit on the other.

  “Not long. You were talking,” he says casually. “You said you had to go. Where did you have to go?”

  I feel embarrassed and suddenly cold as if a wind has just blown in.

  “I don’t remember,” I lie again. “What time is it?”

  “Two o’clock.”

  “Two in the morning?”

  He nods.

  I’ve been out for hours.

  “You’re not going to tell me?” he asks.

  I study his eyes, darker in this dark room. I shake my head once.

  He looks me over, pauses at my feet, seems to accept it.

  “I ordered some clothes for you. They’ll be here in the morning.”

  I just nod.

  “Sit.” He points to the second armchair.

  “I’m cold.”

  He pushes the glass toward me. I notice how his fingertips are blackened, appearing dirty.

  “Sit with me.”

  His request—the way he words it—sounds strange.

  I go, sit down on the armchair beside his.

  He smells like damp and earth.

  He gestures to the second glass of whiskey and I take it. I drink a sip and the burning, it’s somewhat calming. Warming.

  “Tell me about the dream at least.”

  “I saw the little girl,” I say, staring into the fire, drinking more of the whiskey. “And her mother.” I turn to him. “Her dead mother.”

  “I didn’t know you were prone to sleepwalking.”

  “I’m not prone to sleepwalking.”

  “I know what I saw.” He gestures to the things I’d brought out of the library. “You need to stay out of the rooms that are still under construction. The house is very old. You can get hurt.

  “And you care if I get hurt?”

  He shrugs a shoulder.

  “Or is it that you want to do the hurting?”

  “Just stay out of those rooms,” he says, drinking his whiskey. “They’ll give you bad dreams,” he adds with a smirk.

  “Did you know the story when you bought it?”

  He nods, studying me.

  “Did he do it? The count?”

  “That would be my guess.”

  “It’s colder there. I thought it was just the window, but…”

  “The heating’s turned off in there. That’s all.” He swallows the last of his whiskey and I’m not sure he believes what he just said.

  “It’s different than that.”

  “Ghosts can’t hurt you, Amelia. It’s the living you have to watch out for.”

  9

  Gregory

  She studies me just like I did her while she slept. While she dreamt.

  “What you said,” she starts, pausing, looking at the fire for a long moment before turning back to me. “About me wanting it. Wanting to be the Willow Girl, it’s not true.”

  “No?”

  She shakes her head. “But after that night…after Helena was gone, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. About the ceremony. My parents refused to talk about it. My sisters, they’re more obedient. I’m in between them and Helena, I guess.”

  “She was the black sheep of the family?”

  “I don’t know. Our parents were different with her. Always a little harder on her. I thought it was because she was the oldest of us.”

  “By a few minutes.”

  “I’m not making an excuse for them. It was easier being me, I know. And Helena always defended us, protected us. And in thanks, we just let your brother take her. Didn’t even put up a fight.”

  I pour more whiskey and turn to the fire. “Don’t worry about Helena. She’s fine. More than fine.”

  “I’m happy for her that she is. You’re not, though.”

  I feel her eyes burning a hole in the side of my head.

  “Why not? Why aren’t you happy for her? For your brother?”

  I swallow the whiskey in my glass. It tastes bitter. I turn to her.

  “Tell me what you did after that night.”

  I wonder how much Helena told her about what happened on the island. She doesn’t know about me, my part in our doomed ménage-a-trois. I wonder if I told her if it would bring her estimation of her sister down a notch or two or a hundred.

  Wonder what it would do to her estimation of me.

  “I kept going back into the library. Every night for weeks, I couldn’t sleep, and I just kept going back in there. I knew where they’d stored the blocks.” She looks down at the glass in her hands. “Funny that all my life I saw them in a corner, just stacked up, not really hidden. I never knew what they were or what they would be used for and it never occurred to me to ask.”

  She drinks a sip, is silent, but I know she’s not finished yet.

  “I stood on one again,” she says. “I don’t know why.”

  She turns to the fire and I watch the shadow of the flames dance on her face.

  “I looked for the sheaths too, the horrible, stinking things we were made to wear. I think if I’d found those, I would have put one on.” She chances a glance at me. “That’s what I did after that night.”

  “Did it help?”

  “No. I think it did the opposite. I couldn’t let it go.” There’s a long pause. “And I don’t know. I mean, I don’t think I wanted to be chosen. But I didn’t want my sisters to be taken from me either.”

  Her straightforward honesty surprises me. I never expected her to answer my questions.

  “And in a weird way, I knew he’d choose Helena anyway,” she continues.

  I did too. If I think about it.

  But I don’t say it out loud.

  “I was there when she called you,” I tell her.

  She doesn’t seem surprised by this.

  “Is that why you chose me? Not my sisters? Because Helena chose to call me?”

  I swirl the last sip of whiskey in my glass, swallow it, look at her. “Yes.”

  She doesn’t react when I say it, as if she knew my answer, and the silence grows heavy.

  “You chose me to punish her?”

  I drink. I don’t answer.

  “Were you in love with her?”

  She looks right at me, her eyes bright and the question, it comes out of nowhere and I am wholly unprepared.

  “Is that why I’m here? In order to hurt her?”

  I set my glass down, study the intricate pattern of the crystal. “Careful, Amelia.”

  “Is it? I’m being honest with you. The least you can do is be honest with me. You owe me that, I think. After everything.”

  “I owe you nothing,” I say, looking back at the fire, still somewhat calm. “Go to bed.”

  “I’m not tired.”

  “It’ll be better for you if you do as I say and go to bed. Now.”

  “You didn’t bring me all the way here just to send me to bed.”

  I slowly turn to h
er, watch her swallow a sip of whiskey as a log crackles and spits. She’s testing.

  She reaches across the table between our chairs, tentatively touches my gloved hand. “Why do you wear this?”

  I watch her fingers caress the leather.

  “What are you hiding?” she continues.

  I don’t move when she reaches my wrist, teases the glove down a little.

  “Helena said—”

  In an instant, I flip my hand over and capture her wrist.

  She gasps as I yank her from her chair and to her knees before me. Panic fills her pretty blue eyes when I pull her closer and lean in so I’m inches from her face.

  “Don’t play games with me.”

  “Did I hit a nerve?” she asks.

  She grits her teeth when I grip a handful of hair and tug her head backward, her free hand clasping my forearm.

  “Did I?” she asks again, her voice different because of the angle of her head.

  “I’m going to tell you just once more to be careful.”

  “I’m not scared of you.”

  “No?” I drag her to kneel up. “You sure about that?”

  No answer.

  I grin, cock my head to the side. Releasing her wrist, I grip the collar of her sweater and, in one quick tug, rip it down the middle.

  She lets out a small, surprised scream and I look at her, that pretty red bra cupping her small breasts, lifting them, making them swell so invitingly.

  “Still not scared?” I ask, reaching into one of those cups, lifting her breast out, feeling the nipple harden against my thumb. Meeting her eyes, I drag her to stand, pull her to me, take her nipple into my mouth and suck hard.

  Her hands close over my shoulders as she tries to steady herself, and when she sets one knee on the chair, I capture it between my thighs. I watch her eyes as I close my teeth around her nipple and draw it out.

  She lets out a whimper, a sound between pain and pleasure. A flush creeps along her neck, and her eyes darken.

  I push her back to her knees, leaving one breast exposed, the flesh around her nipple red from the abuse of my mouth. I lean in toward her.

  “So, you don’t want this?” I taunt, undoing my belt, opening it, unbuttoning to top button of my jeans.